Smart management - How to be a good corporate politician
Imagine the impact of a corporate briefing that goes something like this: "We, the board, recognise that this company is a loose federation of competing interest groups through which we negotiate to move forward towards a common strategy. So if you see some good alternatives, feel free to challenge what is being proposed by us, or by anyone else. Bear in mind that you may well get some opposition, so it will be important to lobby the right people and build some alliances to make your agenda count"
Unlikely? Yes, of course it is. Surely briefings from the board are about corporate mission and vision.
Yet in many senior managers' experience, the coming together of organisational opinion makers through alliances and coalitions is exactly how strategy is created, or more exactly, given the inevitable differences in vested interests at senior levels, how else could it happen?
Somehow, however, despite all the talk in the past few years about the stakeholder organisation, the urge for corporate unity can blind us to the value and inevitability of diverse interests. This is not surprising in so far as partisan interest is traditionally the stuff of politics, the organisational variety of which often means dirty deals and backstabbing. It is the enemy of a unified organisation. But that misses the big point about politics. For in its positive sense, political work, whether parliamentary or organisational, is all about reconciling different stakeholder interests. Managers who understand this know that it is the essence of their job.
Opposing agendas
Many trainers and training managers appreciate the significance of politics. They encounter opposing agendas every day, positioning their causes in the budget round, in executive meetings and development committees. Yet their experience rarely seems to translate into organisational insight that can directly help managers understand the centrality of politics to managing. For while managers, too, perceive their work to be all about the management of conflicting interests, they do not usually think of politics as the legitimate process of reconciling these different agendas.
A major reason for this developmental gap is that organisations can easily take for granted the motivations that truly drive managerial behaviour. Why do managers do what they do, and how much are they driven by organisational goals rather than self-interest? These are inconvenient questions in a managerial culture still firmly adhering to 'rational' values. For in the 'rational' mindset, organisational goals are supposed to take priority, and managers work on objectives that support these goals, exercising their power in the interests of the wider organisation. But as every manager knows, problems arise when they are faced with accountability for a collective outcome when their colleagues are motivated by different priorities.
The more trying these problems become, the greater the test of managerial motivations. Take the case of Carlo who works for a small furniture manufacturer.
In Carlo's new role as operations manager, he was asked to contribute to business strategy, working more with senior colleagues in the organisation. However, he quickly found that they had different agendas to him, and gradually this started to weigh him down. He failed to persuade them to give greater priority to manufacturing issues that seemed to him to be holding back the business. In consequence, he lost interest in working with them and focused on his own direct responsibilities. That is where his effort should be going anyway, he reasoned, and set out to drive through improvements he could control.
Detailed involvement
Over the next few months he came to know every aspect of what was happening in production, and would constantly be involved with the detailed work of his staff. He did not see that he was interfering, since his motives were to improve the effectiveness of his operation. Inevitably there was a back reaction from both his own staff and colleagues at the business level and he was met with a string of further problems. He found himself working 60 hours a week but not moving operations forward.
Managers faced with diverse agendas find themselves in similar situations. Bewildered and frustrated, the obvious reaction is to absorb themselves in operational detail, engage in destructive political games, or simply sulk. But the constructive alternative can transform their understanding of managing.
Politically fluent managers are guided by a different set of assumptions about organisations. They understand how the rational mindset can saturate management attention and diminish the value of individual motivations in getting results. Above all, they recognise the need to shape their own goals for the organisation, and that achieving them requires the principled use of whatever power they possess. For when power is used for purely selfish ends, personal goals are justifiably perceived as divisive. The more transparent the abuse of that power, the greater the risk to those who misuse it - own goals become just that - own goals.
Inevitably, in the cut and thrust of business, principles can be opaque; after all it is possible to produce an organisational justification for almost any kind of action. But politicians are able to create a meaningful justification for their actions built on a clear understanding of the agendas of others and how these relate to key business issues. Consider Kate, organisation development director in a financial services firm:
The culture of Kate's company reflected a priority towards the sales divisions, such that other functions in the business saw themselves as reactive operations that added less value. Consequently, the role of Kate's function had mainly been to provide basic training. She began to realise that this amounted to little more than an order chasing business strategy that looked increasingly limited and dangerous for the long term. So as well as doing training she started to invest energy in organisational development initiatives that cut across the culture.
Delivering results
Having identified those managers she thought could deliver results, she spent a large amount of her own time helping them achieve significant improvements in their areas of the business. What then started to happen is best described in her own words: "I get a real buzz working with these managers. We are working on some big strategic issues that are sending out shock waves across the company. It's a small but powerful network and I think we are really getting somewhere. We have to negotiate all sorts of political minefields and because I have encouraged them down this route I feel a real commitment toward them." And her conclusion? As she put it: "Because we are working somewhat against the conventional ethos of the firm I have to spend a lot of time networking, making sure I put a positive spin on our work. It's too easy to get squeezed out if senior management don't think you're 'one of us'."
Developing credibility
Kate believes she still has much to do but finds it easier to achieve her own aims because she is seen as a key player who asks questions about important issues. She has developed visibility and credibility with a group of influential managers.
Kate and Carlo illustrate very different motivations for working through the diversity of stakeholder interests inherent in organisations. Carlo worked from a rational perspective and was motivated to take responsibility for activities that promoted organisational alignment. When faced with competing interests he dealt with his frustration by focussing on those few activities where his motivations could remain true. Kate, by contrast, worked from a political mindset and was able to capitalise on the differing agendas she saw all around her. She was motivated to move beyond the organisational hurdles and take responsibility for activities that were outside of her area of control.
So what are the implications of accepting the centrality of politics to managerial work? How can well-intentioned managers such as Carlo be more effective in working in the stakeholder organisation?
Politically able managers recognise the fallacy of pursuing corporate goals without acknowledging the prime importance of their self-interest. They are quick to appraise projects and assignments that have little chance of success, avoiding them in favour of more realistic alternatives. Like Kate, they are likely to feel a responsibility toward a select group of like-minded people who share a common cause, self-styled pockets of good practice that stimulate change from sometimes lowly starting points. Such initiatives may run counter to formal policy and those managers involved inevitably risk being taken for mavericks. This leads them at times to use stealth to build their case, much as Kate did in ensuring that senior management saw the 'positive spin' in her work.
For smart political managers, organisational change is not an activity scheduled in for half a day a week. It is a ceaseless process. What the politically inept describe as dead time, they regard as prime time. Conversations in corridors and around coffee machines are all opportunities to position ideas and understand others' points of view. Networking inside and outside the organisation becomes the motor of political fluency: a vehicle that provides access to power, identifies key issues, and locates resistance.
Managers who fail to understand the idea of stakeholders and the inevitability of politics are out of touch with the prevailing conditions in most organisations. Unfortunately, they are plentiful, hanging on to the myth of corporate rationality; or having abandoned it, frustrated by the lack of advice on how to deal with the misappropriation of power they see around them.
The relative few who discover political mastery usually seem to learn the hard way - by landing a senior role and finding it has little to do with management as they thought they knew it.
It amounts to an interesting challenge for training professionals, who often see the results of poorly managed stakeholder activity, and political ineptness among their clients, right across the spectrum of the organisations they work in.
It is a double challenge. For not only do they have to find learning processes to enable managers to become able politicians, but before they get to grips with that, they may have to go through the process themselves.
Making the transition to a constructive political mindset may seem daunting. It means 'unlearning' the rational model of management, and grasping very different capabilities. It is usually a test of a managers commitment to personal development.
Constructive politics: the key capabilities
- Power and politics
- evaluating the complexity of influence and motives
- Relationships -
evaluating the different barriers to organisational relationships
- Political
mechanisms - recognising the value of lobbying and stealth
- Pockets of good practice - appreciating the value of
establishing worthy causes to stimulate organisation change
- Stakeholder knowledge - knowing
the agendas and motivations of key players
- Organisational knowledge -
knowing the 'who' and 'how' behind decisions
- Business knowledge - knowing the critical organisational
issues
- Persuasive
presentation - developing collaborative outcomes through personal enthusiasm,
logic and the disclosure of motives
- Productive challenge - causing others
to analyse their assumptions
- Reading others - a continual observation and evaluation of
motives and actions
- Balanced motives -
clarity about personal and organisational motivations
- Managerial irreverence - a healthy scepticism about the
conventions of what is possible
